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It is a bit confusing looking through current and old posts and some old posts that are updated to get a conclusive answer. Is it true that all new drives now come from the factory with LibreDrive blocked so that unless you find a used one or buy off a member here that has old stock you are completely out of luck?

It might be over simplified to think of it this way, but you can think optical drives as being in one of two (maybe three) categories.

First, there's the LG based drives that can be flashed to support LibreDrive. That list of drives and the flashing procedures and tools are well documented in the Ultimate UHD Drives Flashing Guide.

Second, there's the Pioneer drives. For the most part, since Pioneer updated their firmware any new Pioneer drive you buy will have firmware that's too new and can not support LibreDrive. These drives should still generally work for DVDs and regular blu-rays.
There are sellers on this forum that still have access to new Pioneer drives with older, compatible firmware and you can purchase a drive from them.
There are some drives, like the Verbatim 43888, that used to always come with a Pioneer drive inside that worked out of the box with MakeMKV and supported LibreDrive. Lately, however, this drive is most likely to come with a LG based BU40N drive what would need to be flashed to support LibreDrive. Verbatim 43888 with LG drive?
There are other drives, sold under other names, that might come with a Pioneer drive inside that can be cross flashed to something that would work.
And there are older Pioneer drives that left the factory without the capability to read 4K UHDs that might be able to be cross flashed to work. Unfortunately, the tools to cross flash a Pioneer drive are not publicly available and require an x86 Windows machine to work.

Finally, there's everything else. MakeMKV has fairly wide compatibility with drives. So, if you've got a 20 year old DVD drive in a closet, there's a good chance it'll work with MakeMKV to rip DVDs. The same is true for old blu-ray drives.

Titanic wrote: ↑

Fri Mar 14, 2025 8:28 pm

Is it true that all new drives now come from the factory with LibreDrive blocked so that unless you find a used one or buy off a member here that has old stock you are completely out of luck?

No, that's not the case; there are new drives you can flash still being sold by retailers. Others may be able to provide you with a more complete list, but I know from personal experience of two LG models (this external one and this internal one) that can be flashed right out of the retail box.

I also own a Pioneer I bought from Billy that I'm happy with, but I save it for "special occasions" when the LGs can't get the job done, although that's pretty rare. As I understand it, the Pioneers fall into the category you described: recently-produced ones purchased from retailers can't be Libre-ated, at least not by a mere mortal like me.